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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

A New Regular* Blog Feature: A How-To You Actually Need

* And by regular, I mean whenever I remember it.

In this day and age, there is a plethora of information about things you need to know when raising a child.

Don't know which end the diaper goes on? No worries, there's a detailed account of how to do that on the Internet. How do you stay on the slippery newborn bath time rodeo for more than a minute? Never fear! There's a YouTube video to guide you through the soapy war zone.

But inevitably, you still come across tasks that leave you stumped.

I've found these are the tasks that directly impact me getting back into a normal life routine...so they are burning hot priorities for me to figure out.

YOU lucky folks are going to benefit from my distress and subsequent ingenuity in this new feature: "A How-To You Actually Need."

How-To #1: How To Go Shopping with a Newborn

I'm not talking about carousing the mall for the latest fashions. I hate clothes shopping with a white, fiery, burning passion and plan on rocking my maternity clothes until I am old enough to wear a mu mu in public without drawing too much attention.

This how-to deals directly with shopping which requires a cart.

My first trip to the grocery store after The Bean was born was an exciting day for me. Freedom and normalcy were in the air. I was actually leaving the house! I would be driving my car again! There would be actual adults around! People would coo at The Bean while I acted all aloof and like a well put together first-time mom going about her daily chores!

Once I arrived at the store though, I was quickly faced with a dilemma. (You can click on all the images to make them bigger to read)

I needed ingenuity quick!

Instead I ended up with this:

So I headed home defeated and hungry.

I convinced myself women in the past must have gone food shopping with a newborn, however I couldn't exactly recall ever seeing this take place and how it was managed.

Oh sure, I've seen this many times:

But putting The Bean in the child seat of the cart at her age would result in this:

I finally remembered I received a baby carrier as a gift. Aha! A hands-free baby carrying device. Exactly what I needed! Except when I put The Bean in and got myself situated, this happened:

Huh.

Turns out, that piece of equipment wasn't made to carry little pygmy children.

And so we starved and all died.

Actually, I went to the great guru Google and asked him what the hell. And he was all, "Dude, haven't you heard of the Moby? All the cool, hippie moms are doing it. You can put little pipsqueak children in it and go buy diapers AND ice cream--at the same time!"

The Moby is intimidating at first. Mainly because it looks like a giant sheet roughly the size of a school bus that you must somehow origami around yourself so it safely holds your child.

Lucky for me, the people who write the instructions on how to wrap a Moby are the same people who write the manuals for furniture assembly (a language I am fluent in...no, really). So on the first time out of the gate: